The present invention relates to dentistry in general, and more particularly to an improvement in apparatus for building superstructures on broken or undermined dentition, the apparatus being a dental anchor magazine housing a dental anchor.
Prior art apparatus for anchoring a superstructure to an understructure of a tooth requires drilling a number of channels into the tooth or understructure, where anchoring rods are then inserted into the channels and are allowed to protrude above the understructure so that the protruding portions thereof serve as means for anchoring the superstructure. It is noted, that these anchoring rods are extremely small, being on the order of 0.03" in diameter and approximately 0.2" in length.
Because of the relatively small size of the anchoring rods, and because of the limited working areas, a chuck attachment or a coupling tool is used by the dentist to hold the anchoring rods when being iserted into the channels. The chuck attachment or coupling tool is disclosed in my co-pending U.S. Pat. application Ser. No. 669,688, and also in my U.S. Pat. No. 3,675,328, to which reference may be made. It is noted, that each of the anchoring rods must be inserted by the dentist into the socket of the chuck attachment or coupling tool, which is time consuming. Only the manipulating portion of the anchoring rod is received in the chuck attachment or coupling tool, so that only a limited coupling engagement is provided therebetween. Furthermore, the prior art anchoring rods mentioned above are useless without the chuck attachment or coupling tool, which may easily be lost or misplaced by the dentist, thereby causing further delay in the replacement thereof.